Gas prices? I just shrug and pay it, whatever it is that day. It's one of those inevitable things, and there are so damn many more pressing things that I have to be concerned about these days...

Carole - the biggest engine behind inflation is the banks. They create vast amounts of "new" (I call it fictional) money, with the stroke of a computer key, every time they make a loan to a large corporation. They create hundreds of times more money, in effect, than does the government (the mint). It's not real money, but it's out there, nonetheless, on paper (and I'm not talking about greenbacks) and in cyberspace.

If you continue to artificially increase the money supply...in a world with limited (and shrinking) actual resources...then the money becomes worth less and less in real terms, and buys less of those shrinking resources.

(If there were a way to artificially create gold or oil out of thin air, for instance, they would soon be almost worthless. We cannot artificially create real resources out of thin air...but we CAN AND DO create money that way all the time! And without printing a single bill or minting a single coin!)

It IS a vast pyramid scheme.

Who does that benefit? The banks (who collect interest on their loans) and the major corporations who move large amounts of digital money around the world to where they can find cheap labour. Who does it hurt? Ordinary people everywhere, and seniors most of all.

Our imaginary money is in fact, completely worthless...but we have all agreed (so far) to pretend it's worth something. Not as much as it was last year, of course...but something. It's a game.

Want to guess where a Ponzi scheme finally ends?

- LH